Читать книгу Murder Mirage: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lawrence Donovan - Страница 4

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Patrick Brennan, police patrolman, was the first to see the beautiful woman of glass. Unfortunately, Patrolman Brennan did not live long enough to report the incredible apparition. The policeman died heroically in the discharge of duty.

The snow had been pelting down. It had started more than an hour before the lovely, vivid woman was transformed into a horrible, shadowy silhouette in the window of plate glass. The twin phenomena of the snow and the ghastly shadow seemed to be wholly unrelated.

Patrolman Brennan might have told something of what really happened, if he had survived. As it was, the policeman was left lying in the street. His service revolver had belched death. It had taken double toll of his attackers, but that had not been enough to save him.

Snow is not unusual in Manhattan. Blizzardfalls, such as this one, are rare, but they happen occasionally in proper time and season. This snowfall was remarkable. It was being recorded by the United States weather bureau as an all-time mark in freakish weather.

It was nearly midnight when the first stinging particles whipped the faces of the theater crowds on Broadway. Amazed voices intoned unbelief.

“Can you imagine? A sleet storm! Of all things!”

These and kindred exclamations greeted the beginning of the storm.

In the offices of the government weather bureau was even more amazement than elsewhere. A gray-haired, scholarly observer divided his time between a window and his instruments. He frequently consulted his various graphs.

“Look at that night map,” he growled. “We are directly in the area of high pressure extending a couple of hundred miles into the Atlantic. So it couldn’t be possible!”

“Sure, that’s what the map says,” boomed a deep voice. “But that stuff on the window isn’t taffy candy, mister. I felt it, and I tasted it. It’s snow. You’ll have to make a new map.”

The speaker was an authority on maps. For his name stood among the ten or dozen most eminent engineers in the world. The man’s fists were approximately of the size of his head. And his head was of leonine proportions.

He was Colonel John Renwick, known to the weather bureau officials, and to thousands of others, as “Renny.” His fame as an engineer was perhaps somewhat less than his position of note as one of the five adventuring companions of Clark Savage, Jr., better known as the man of bronze, Doc Savage.

“You are correct,” stated a smaller man, whose face was thin and of an unhealthy pallor. “It is undoubtedly snow. Moreover, within a short time there will be a violent thunderstorm.”

“You’re crazy!” promptly declared the grayish weather observer. “How could there be a thunderstorm? Look! The nearest area of low pressure is south of the Carolinas! So there couldn’t be an electrical storm.”

The small, thin man shook his head.

“How could there be a snowstorm in midsummer?”

The thin man was Major Thomas J. Roberts, known as “Long Tom.” He was another of the companions of Doc Savage, an electrical wizard.

This was the incredible part of the snowstorm. For it was midsummer. To be exact, it was the midnight of July 4th. In a matter of only minutes, it would be the morning of July 5th. So, as the weather observer had insisted, “it couldn’t be snowing.”

The oldest resident of Manhattan had never witnessed such a phenomenon. As long as there had been a weather bureau there had been no such freakish occurrence.

“Look at this,” directed the grayish weather observer. “All of the Middle West is having the worst heat wave of the summer. Boston and all the way to Portland, Maine, show high temperatures. Right now, Washington and Philadelphia are in the eighties!”

While unbelievable, almost fantastic weather history was being recorded in the offices of the government, downtown streets rapidly became deserted. Shortly after midnight but little traffic moved in the vicinity of the shopping districts. The snow had not been deep enough actually to block motor vehicles, but summer-clad residents had faded from the streets.

The pale headlight beams of a small car penciled into a deserted block near an elevated railway corner. The little car was a yellow coupe of the “for rent” variety. The driver held to almost the exact middle of the street. As the coupe turned into the street, there was a loud, squishy blop! Air hissed for a few seconds.

“Oh!” breathed a tense voice. “I was afraid something would happen!”

A front tire had blown out.

Street lights picked out the face of the driver. The face was small, with features exquisitely formed. Large, luminous eyes reflected the outside light. Slender white hands gripped the steering wheel. These hands were inadequate to driving with a front tire flat.

The small coupe coughed over to the curb. One side bedded down where the snow had drifted some.

“We’ll have to get out here and go on quickly,” said another woman, who was seated beside the driver. “I know we were followed when we left the airport. We should have separated then.”

The fear in the woman’s voice was immediately confirmed. Two other cars were turning into the block. Both were black, closed sedans. The curtains of both cars were tightly drawn.

The slender young woman under the wheel slid from her position. She pushed the door open against the storm.

“We’ll go different ways!” she exclaimed, breathlessly. “I’ll endeavor to catch an elevated train! Then you can slip over to the next street and take a taxi!”

The two closed cars, one trailing the other, were moving down upon the coupe. The young woman who had spoken reached into the little car and snatched a satchel purse of metallic chain mesh from the seat. She slipped and floundered with her first steps, but she gained the sidewalk and started running.

“You go the other way then!” she cried out to her companion. “Oh, hurry! I’ll get the message to Mr. Savage! I’ll wait, if you do not get there first!”

One of the two sedans swerved past the yellow coupe. Its invisible driver pulled the car in again close to the young woman on the sidewalk. She had caught up her light skirts and her trim legs flashed with silk as she ran. The clinging snow was more than ankle deep.

Four figures sprang from the sedan into the snowy street. These were men of unusually upright stature, but they moved stiffly. Their feet made dragging motions, as if their legs and bodies were impeded by some heavy weight.

These men were between the young woman and the elevated stairs at the corner. But they did not move as if they intended intercepting her. When they sprang from the sedan, they took up a position near the middle of the street.

The young woman’s mouth was opened gaspingly. Her luminous eyes widened with terror. She could see the faces of the four men in the street.

“Oh! They’ve come!” she gasped. “I knew they’d come!”

The faces of the four men were of the color of dull lead. Any one observing them would have had the impression of corpses walking. Perhaps the young woman imagined that, or it might have been something more sinister, more appalling.

For a few yards, the four men merely kept pace with the fleeing woman. The color in their faces was caused by masks. These were fitted snugly over their noses and chins. They covered their necks and appeared to be attached to the heavy material under their rough outer clothing.

These men did not display any weapons openly. Two carried peculiar-looking instruments. These could have been an iceman’s tongs, only they had handles several feet in length. The men paced the woman with these strange devices over their shoulders.

The young woman was nearing the stairway to the “el.”

Again she cried out, as if to reassure herself, “I’ll get it to Mr. Savage——”

The black sedan from which the four men had emerged scooted suddenly ahead. The four men edged out into the street and made way for it. The car speared in between them and the running woman.

The young woman then was in front of the plate glass windows of a store. This store handled musical instruments. Its double windows were filled with the gleam of polished silver and brass. The plate glass was fitted in from the level of the sidewalk. The woman’s shadow was reflected on it like a fleeing ghost.

The door of the sedan next to the sidewalk, popped open. A globe twice the size of a football rolled out. This sphere had been impelled sharply from inside of the car. The sedan door snapped shut. The globe struck the sidewalk pavement in several inches of snow.

The snow did not impede the progress of the spherical object. For where the globe touched, there was instantly no snow.

The fronts of buildings, the skeleton-like structure of the “el,” the coupe and the other cars were abruptly bathed in a weird, greenish light. The light was a warm glowing, yet it seemed to have some substance. It was as if the air had suddenly been filled with invisible particles.

The second sedan had been pulled to the opposite side of the street, some distance away. Two men sprang from this car, running as they hit the street. These men were unmasked. Their white faces looked drawn and desperate under visors of caps pulled low over their eyes.

The two men swung automatic pistols of heavy caliber. They seemed intent upon reaching the four men with the dull leaden masks. But they did not shoot. The sedan from which they had come remained standing.

The air was filled with a low, slow hissing. The rolling globe lost the impetus it had been given. It was close to the young woman.

The woman, then in front of one of the plate glass windows, gave forth a scream. The cry was high-pitched, almost animal in its utter anguish. Only death could wring such an emanation from a human throat.

There was another, lesser scream. It was like a minor echo of the death wail. This came from the yellow coupe from which the young woman had come. A slender figure, closely hooded and cloaked, slipped from the little car. This was the other woman.

The glowing of the strange globe on the sidewalk was blinding in its intensity. The two men armed with automatics skidded to a halt in the snow. They cursed wildly and swabbed their coat sleeves across their eyes.

The slim figure from the car crossed the sidewalk. It reached the building front. The woman ran along the buildings, guiding herself with one lightly touching hand. Arriving at a cross alley between streets, she darted into it.

For a few more seconds the whole street was filled with the low, slow hissing. The invisible particles seemed to fill the air with a minor crackling. The fluorescent, greenish glow gave the snow an unearthly aspect.

With the one soul-chilling scream, the young woman who was attempting to reach the elevated, vanished from before the tall plate glass window. The space between this spot and the stairs of the “el” was brightly illuminated. But the woman did not reach the steps of the “el.”

For a matter of seconds, it appeared she might have fallen in the snow; that the fleecy downfall had buried her. But all around, the snow was melting as if touched by sudden, fierce heat. And when the pavement in front of the plate glass windows was smooth and bare, the woman was not there.

The four men in the masks of leaden color moved like automatons. The pair with the long-handled tongs reached the sidewalk. Between them, they trapped and nipped the globe that had come from the sedan. With the tongs they swung it back into an opened door of the car.

All climbed in quickly. The sedan jumped away with a clashing of gears. The driver did not appear to be an expert, but he was in a hurry to leave. The car skidded around the corner, following the line of “el” pillars.

Patrick Brennan, the patrolman, was ringing in at a box in the next cross avenue when the woman screamed. The patrolman’s teeth had been playing like castanets. His light, summer uniform had not been made for a July blizzard.

Dropping the patrol box phone, Brennan whipped toward the corner.

Blinding luminance shut off the policeman’s vision as if a camera shutter had clicked. He groped with one hand around the corner building.

Patrolman Brennan first saw the outline of the yellow coupe. He hard-heeled toward it. His feet were hitting bare pavement. He clop-clopped over to the little car. His vision caught the music store window. He stared for a moment, his lower jaw dropping.

Beyond the coupe, the two men from the second sedan started running. They held automatics. Both stumbled as if partly blinded.

“Hold it, you two!” barked Patrolman Brennan. “What’s this all about? Stop, I say!”

This was a mistake on the part of the policeman. His voice provided the two white-faced men with a target. Their hands whipped up and the automatics erupted with a mean ripple.

Patrolman Brennan sagged, and he coughed. One hand on the side of the coupe prevented him from collapsing. The erupting streams from the automatics were all that guided his aim. Though his big body was slowly sinking, Patrolman Brennan’s hand was steady.

Three jumps of the service revolver and both running men rolled into the snow. One lay still. The body of the other jerked. Patrolman Brennan was now on his knees. He was unable to rise, so he crawled. He clawed his way into the street, making toward the halted, second sedan.

The driver of this car ignored the bodies in the street. The sedan moved away mockingly. Patrolman Brennan lifted his revolver. His finger curled around the trigger. But his strength left him.

Scarlet fluid trickled from the policeman’s lips. It stained the snow in a circle around his head.

The yellow coupe stood alone and empty. All life had gone from the block. The three bodies were only dark lumps. These were whitening with the still-falling snow.

In the space where the young woman had been before the plate glass window of the music store was a blackened area. The pavement looked as if a searing iron had been run over it.

The young woman’s body could not be seen.

On the sidewalk in front of the music store was a queer little collection of objects.

Directly before the plate glass window lay a satchel purse of metallic chain mesh. The purse had flopped open. A small caliber automatic pistol, such as a woman might have carried for protection, had slipped out.

A dozen bright metal buttons lay in a glittering cluster. From these emanated the greenish glow which still lingered over the street.

A diamond ring had rolled to the edge of the curb. An expensive wrist watch and earrings set with emeralds were close to the window of the music store.

Of the lovely figure which the jewelry had adorned, there was no slightest trace.